Download Cliff`s Literature Terms

Cliff’s Literature Terms
 Allegory
A story in which people, things, and events have another meaning. Examples of
allegory are Bunyan’s pilgrim’s Progress, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, and Orwell’s
Animal Farm.

Ambiguity
Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that
are incomparable..
 Apostrophe
Direct address, usually to someone or something that is not present. Keat’s Bright
star! Would I were steadfast” is an apostrophe to a star, and “To Autumn” is an
apostrophe to a personalized season.
 Connotation
The implications of a word or phrase, as opposed to its exact meaning (denotation).
Both China and Cathay denote a region in Asia, but to a modern reader, the
connotations are different.
 Convention
A device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means
of expression. For example, a lover observing the literary love conventions cannot eat
or sleep, and grows pale and lean. Romeo, at the beginning of the plat is a
conventional lover, while an overweight lover in Chaucer is consciously mocking the
convention.
 Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word as opposed to connotation.
 Didactic
Explicitly instructive. A didactic poem or novel may be good or bad. Pope’s “Essay
on Man” is didactic; so are the works of Ayn Rand.
 Digression
The use of material unrelated to the subject of a work. The interpolated narratons in
the novels of Cervantes or Fielding may be called digression and Tristam Shandy
includes a digression on digression.
 Epigram
A pithy saying often using contrast. The epigram is also a verse form, usually brief
and pointed.
 Euphemism
A figure of speech using indirection to avoid bluntness, such as “deceased” for
“dead” or “remains” for “corpse”.
 Grotesque
Characterized b y distortions or incongruities. The fiction of Poe or Flannery
O’Connor is often described as grotesque.
 * Hyperbole
Deliberate exaggeration, overstatement. As a rule, hyperbole is self-conscious,
Without the intention of being accepted literally. “The strongest man in the world” or
”a diamond as big as the Ritz” are hyperbolic.
 Jargon
The special language of a profession or group. The term jargon usually has pejorative
associations, with the implication that jargon is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to
outsiders. The writings of the lawyer and the literary critic are both susceptible to
jargon.
 Literal
Not figurative; accurate to the letter; matter of fact or concrete.
 Lyrical
Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.
 Oxymoron
A combination of opposites: the union of contradictory terms. Romeo’s line
“feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health” has four examples of the device.
 Parable
A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question.
Parables are allegorical stories.
 Paradox
A statement that seems to be self-contradicting, but, in fact, is true. The figure in
Donne’s holy sonnet that concludes I never shall be “chaste except you ravish me”.
is a good example of the device.
 Parody
A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic
effect. Fielding’s Shamela is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela. A contest for
parodies of Hemingway draws hundreds of people each year.
 Personification
A figurative use of language which endows the nonhuman (ideas, inanimate
objects, animals, abstracions) with human characteristics. Keats personifies the
nightingale, the Grecian urn, and the autumn in his major poems.
 Reliability
A quality of some fictional narrators whose word the readers can trust. There are both
reliable and unreliable narrators, that is, tellers of a story who should or should not be
trusted. Most narrators are reliable (Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway, Conrad’s Marlow),
but some are clearly not to be trusted (Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart,” several novels by
Nabokov. And there are some about whom readers have been unable to decide (
James’s governess in The Turn of The Screw, Ford’s The Good Soldier).

* Rhetorical question
A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply. No reply is expected
because the question presupposes only one possible answer. The lover of Suckling’s
“Shall I waste in despair/ Die because a lady’s fair?” has already decided the answer is
no.
 * solioloquy
A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud. A
monologue has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to those who do not
interrupt. Hamlet’s “ To be, or not to be” and “ O! what a rogue and peasant slave am
I “ are soliloquies. Browning’s “ My Last Duchess” and “Fra Lippo Lippi” are
monologues, but the hypocritical monk of his “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
cannot reveal his thoughts to others.
 * Stereotype
A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea. In literature, a stereotype
could apply to the unvarying plot and characters of some works of fiction (those of
Barbara Cartland, for example) or to the stock characters and plots of many of the
greatest stage comedies.
 Syllogism
A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn
from them. A syllogism begins with a major premise (“ All tragedies end
unhappily.”) followed by a minor premise (“Hamlet is a tragedy.”) and a conclusion (
Therefore, “Hamlet ends unhappily.”).
 Thesis
The theme, meaning, or position that a writer undertakes to prove or support.
Metrical Terms
 * allite4ration
The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of
words. “Gnus never know pneumonia” is an example of alliteration, since, despite the
spellings, all four words begin with the “n” sound.
 * assonance
The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. “ Aland laid waste with all its
young men slain” repeats the same “a” sound in “laid”, “waste”, and “slain”.
 Ballad meter
A four-line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet
In lines two and four.
O mother, make my bed,
O make it soft and narrow.
Since my love died for me today,
I’ll die for him tomorrow.
 * blank verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Men call him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the crystal battlements from morn
To noon he fell. From noon to dewy eve.
Blank verse is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays. As well as that of Milton’s
Paradise Lost.
 Dactyl
A metrical foot of three syllables, an accented syllable followed by two unaccented
syllablers.
 * end- stopped
A line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, comma, colon,
semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark are end-stopped lines.
 Free verse
Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The petry of
Walt Whitman is perhaps the best-known example of free verse.
 * heroic couplet
Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc, with the thought usually
completed in the two-line unit.
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses must be laid in dust,
This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame,
And midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.
 Hexameter
A line containing six feet.
 * iamb
A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.
The iamb is the most common foot in English poetry.
 Internal rhyme
Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather that at the end.
“ God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!Why look’st thou so? – With my crossbow
I shot the albatross.
Line three contains the internal rhyme of “so” and “bow”.

Onomatopoeia
The use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are “buzz”,
“hiss”, or “honk”.
 * pentameter
A line containing five feet. The iambic pentameter is the most common line written
in English verse written before 1950.
 Rhyme royal
A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and
other medieval poets.
 *Sonnet
Normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian or
Petrachan, sonnet is rhymed abbba, abba, cdc,cdc; the English, or Shakespearean,
sonnet is rhymed abab,cdcd,efef,gg.
 *Stanza
Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme
scheme.
 Terza rima
A three-line stanza rhymed aba,bcb,cdc. Dante’s Divine Comedy is written in terza
rima.
 * tetrameter
A line of four feet.
Grammatical Terms
 Antecedent
That which goes before, especially the word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun
refers. In the sentence “ The witches cast their spells,” the antecedent of the pronoun
“their” is the noun “witches.”
 Clause
A group of words containing a subject and its verb that may or may not be a
complete sentence. In the sentence, ”When you are old, you will be beautiful,” the
first clause (“When you are old,”) is a dependent clause and not a complete sentence.
“You will be beautiful” is an independent clause and could stand by itself.
 Ellipsis
The omission of a word or several words necessary for a complete construction that
is still understandable. “ If rainy, bring an umbrella” is clear enough through the
words “it is” and “you” have been left out.
 Imperative
The mood of a verb that gives an order. ‘Eat your spinach “ uses an imperative verb.
 Modify
To restrict or limit in meaning. In the phrase “large, shaggy dog,” the two adjectives
modify the noun; in the phrase “very shaggy dog,” the adverb “very” modifies the
adjective “shaggy,” which modifies the noun “dog.”
 Parallel Structure
A similar grammatical structure within a sentence or within a paragraph. Winston
Churchill’s “ We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields” speech or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech
depend chiefly on the use of parallel structure.
 Periodic sentence
A sentence grammatically complete at only one end. A loose sentence is
grammatically complete before the period. Tht following are (1) periodic and (2)
loose sentences.
1. When conquering love did first my heart assail./Unto mine
aid I summoned every sense.
2. Fair is my love, and cruel as she’s fair.
Periodic sentences complete the important idea at the end, while loose sentences put
the important idea first. Neither is a better sentence. Good writers use both.
 Syntax
The structure of a sentence.